Sunday, December 27, 2009

Call me Voltaire. I am a guest writer for Love Kudos and will be bringing a male perspective to this blog.

Through twists and turns, good fortune and bad, I’ve learned which traditional dating rules can be bent and which can be broken. I am a believer that much of the conventional dating advice out there, while sometimes intuitive, will ultimately fail at leading men to successfully court the women they desire, or will seek to convince men to play a caricature and lose their sense of identity. I look to help men succeed in their dating lives by sharing my knowledge, my experience, and my passion.

Although most of my blog entries will be geared towards advice for men, I hope that my postings will also provide great insight for women into how men think.

At times I may come across as patronizing, at times you’ll laugh incredulously at my advice, and at times you’ll vehemently disagree. I welcome all of your feedback, both positive and negative. I encourage you to remain open-minded, try things you haven’t tried before, but never lose who you are.

“Be who you've always been, just be this as well.” – Dogma, 1999

One of the most common sayings in the dating world is, “Nice guys finish last.” Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Why does society keep drilling this maxim into our heads? Read any survey of “important qualities in a man” and you’ll see that women want a man who’s handsome, intelligent, and funny, but most importantly they want a man who is confident. The adage “nice guys finish last” ignores this fact, and even implies that being “nice” and being “confident” are mutually exclusive, in that you are either nice and not confident, or confident and not nice. However, these two qualities are not in fact incongruous.

Let’s examine the different combinations of these characteristics:

not nice, not confident An unfriendly, insecure guy. A loser jerk. The worst of both worlds.
Nobody wants to be this guy, and nobody wants to associate with anyone like this.
Often times the reason these people aren’t nice is because society has shunned them for their lack of confidence and now they’re bitter about it.
In the long term, this guy will end up alone.

nice, not confident This guy gets nervous talking to women to whom he’s attracted, but he has several male and female friends because he’s a nice guy.
He may go on dates with women he’s met via online dating sites, but he can never make it click with the ones he’s truly interested in because the women just aren’t romantically interested in him.
In the long term, this guy will end up settling for less than what he wanted.

not nice, confident This is what most people would call a “player” or a “douchebag”.
Sure, he might be able to get some one-night stands, but he has no chance of maintaining a long-term relationship. Let’s face it… no sane woman wants to live with a guy that’s not nice to her.
In the long term, this guy may settle down but will often times end up with a woman
that doesn’t respect herself.

nice, confident Women are instantly interested in this type of guy because of his confidence. And imagine their surprise when they find out that he’s nice, too!
This guy is someone that women are attracted to and someone that they can see themselves being in a relationship with.
In the long term, this guy will have many options of attractive, intelligent women to date.

Most single men fall into one of the two middle categories. This is why “nice guys finish last” is such a common assumption amongst singles, as most single guys fall into one of those two categories and most single women only meet guys from those two categories.

My upcoming blog entries will focus on how to become that nice, confident guy, and how to make the most of it once you’ve reached that point.